1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for organizing and representing corporate HR and management responsibility data.
2. Description of the Prior Art and Related Information
In a traditional “old style” company, each person reports to one and only one supervisor and that supervisor is responsible for the employee's career development, performance evaluations, and salary adjustments as well as for giving that employee their day-to-day work assignments and monitoring the timely completion of those assignments. In this case, it is sufficient to show a manager the information about the people who directly report to them. This information is meaningful to that person, because they are responsible for the quality of the work of the people who report to them. If, however, there is a person who is responsible for a set of operations in the company, but the employees who work in that department do not report directly to that person, then that person would have to somehow generate a report that shows the performance of the department rather than a report detailing the performance of the people that work for him. This report by department (or organization) would give that person the information she needs, or would give her superiors the information they need to analyze performance. The association between that manager and the department, however, is not a relationship that is typically stored in the system. The person who requests the report must know the person they are evaluating well enough to know what responsibilities have been given to that person and what dimension and dimension value should be chosen to generate the correct report. They may also have to run multiple reports if the person has been given multiple responsibilities.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional organization hierarchy 100 of the sales organization of an exemplary company called XYZ Company. As shown, the sales hierarchy 100 is headed by global sales 102, to which the global direct sales department 104 and the global telesales department 106 report. The European direct sales department 108 reports to the global direct sales department 104 and the European telesales 110 reports to the Global telesales department 106. The national direct sales departments for Germany, Italy, England and France shown at 112, 114, 116 and 118 respectively, report to the European direct sales department 108. Similarly, the telesales departments 120, 122 and 124 for England, Germany and France, respectively, report to the European telesales department 110. FIG. 2 shows another representation of the organization hierarchy 100. This representation, in addition to the structure of XYZ's sales organization, also shows the person(s) in charge of each of the aforementioned departments, and whom they report to. In this fictitious company, Steven Roberts is the CEO of XYZ, as shown at 202. Benny Webster is in charge of the global direct sales department, as shown at 204 and Charles Bailey heads the global telesales department, as shown at 206. Both Mr. Webster and Mr. Bailey report to Steven Roberts. As shown in FIG. 2 at 208, Joe Smith reports to Benny Webster and is responsible for European direct sales, but has delegated day to day operational responsibility for European direct sales to Rosemary Pritchard. Joe Smith, in turn, reports to Charles Bailey and heads European telesales, as shown at 210. As shown at 212 and 220, Petra K is responsible for both direct and telesales in France. Max K is responsible for direct sales in both Germany and Italy, as suggested by 214 and 216. Zoe F. heads up telesales operations in Germany. Finally, direct sales in Great Britain are Jane C's responsibility, while telesales in Great Britain are headed by Liza B. As also shown, Max K. and Jane C. report to Joe Smith through Rosemary Pritchard, while Zoe F. and Liza B report to Joe Smith. As is proper in view of her responsibilities, Petra N. reports to Joe Smith through Rosemary Pritchard for European direct sales activities in France and to Joe Smith for telesales activities in France.
FIG. 3 shows an example of a conventional Human Resources (HR) supervisor hierarchy of the XYZ sales force. This hierarchy 300 shows the relationships in XYZ's sales force from an HR point of view and from an operational point of view. Corporate officer titles are included and the down arrows show the reports (if any) of each person within the hierarchy. The up arrows 302, 304, 306 and 308 are used to indicate reporting relationships, such as when a person with more than one responsibility reports to more than one person. For example, Joe smith, as shown at 302 reports to Charles Bailey for European telesales matters and to Benny Webster for European direct sales matters. Similarly, Petra N reports to Rosemary Pritchard for French direct sales and to Joe Smith for French telesales. In other words, Petra N's HR manager is Joe Smith, who is also her operational manager for French direct sales, as shown at 306. Petra N's operational manager for French direct sales, however, is Rosemary Pritchard as indicated at 308, and not Joe Smith. Likewise, Joe Smith's HR manager is Benny Webster, who is also Joe Smith's operational manager for European direct sales. Charles Bailey, on the other hand is Joe Smith's operational manager for European telesales, as shown at 302.
From these HR hierarchies such as shown in FIGS. 1-3, applications may generate reports to evaluate key indicators that may help managers set performance objectives for their organizations and measure how their reports are executing against those set objectives. At the highest levels in the company, the executive managers have the ability to view the performance of all areas of the enterprise. It is these top level managers that are the ones responsible for ensuring that the objectives of each individual department meet the objectives of the enterprise as a whole. For example, top-level managers may want to know how well are their managers performing and how efficient is the current organizational structure of the enterprise. Toward that end, it is useful for the top-level managers to have the ability to generate reports on the operational responsibilities of the persons reporting to them and on the performance of their manager's organizations.
The complex organizational structure of modern enterprises makes the visualization of responsibilities and performance of those involved in the running of the enterprise especially difficult. The problem is often exacerbated by the fact that many employees, in the performance of their duties, often report to more than one manager, as detailed relative to FIGS. 1-3. The problem, therefore, of how best to represent an employee's position within a hierarchical management structure, together with an accurate representation of all of the employee's operational responsibilities has often proved to an unwieldy one. Moreover, given that an employee may have several responsibilities distributed across several management or business units, it has proven to be difficult to gain an accurate insight into all of the employee's responsibilities and an accurate measure of how they are performing in each of their responsibilities. Current state of the art business intelligence applications provide business metrics along many different dimensions. When such conventional applications refer to the ‘manager’ dimension, they usually refer to only the HR supervisor dimension. This leads to problems when a same person manages two sales groups, as detailed above. In that case, to see the total sales results for which that person has responsibility, it is necessary to either manually add up the results for both sales groups or to create a fictitious (i.e., that has no existence but for reporting purposes) rollup sales group that represents both sales groups combined. The relative fluidity of today's sales force renders the situation worse. For example, such fictitious sales groups must be changed whenever a manager's responsibilities change or when a manager leaves or is added, rendering the organizational and HR hierarchies very unstable and prior period comparisons difficult.
From the foregoing, it may be appreciated that improved computer-implemented methods and systems for mapping, representing and storing complex HR and operational relationships within an enterprise are needed. Specifically, such methods and systems should accurately model the fact that employees have different HR and operational managers, if needed. Such methods and systems should accurately represent the results of the organization and to identify the person or persons responsible for those results. In addition, such methods and systems should accurately represent summarized results for all organizations managed by the same person. Moreover, such methods and systems should enable analysis of the performance of a manager without having to define a fictitious or dummy organization that accurately represents all of the manager's responsibilities.